Brad Flory column: Memories of 1970's Goose Lake International Music Festival have been 'exposed' on tape

Measured by numbers of people, the Goose Lake International Music Festival was the biggest thing ever in Jackson County.

Forty years ago today, the spectacle was over.

Two hundred thousand longhairs who were often stoned and sometimes naked cleared out of Leoni Township. Disgusted local officials vowed, correctly, that the county would never have another Goose Lake.

When I arrived in town 15 years later, it was striking to notice the range of disagreement among people who remembered Goose Lake.

Some called the three-day festival an ugly incident marked by open lawlessness. Even the governor declared himself appalled by what happened near Jackson.

Other people, including middle-aged types the kids at Goose Lake might call "straights," said local outrage was overblown. The festival crowd, in this view, was peaceful and fun-loving.

No one guessed a digital age was coming that allows everyone to peek inside Goose Lake and see for ourselves.

A Chicago newspaper reporter named John McDonough attended the festival on his own time and shot 8 mm film. Forty years later, he put it on DVD and allowed the Citizen Patriot to post excerpts online.

Hoping to be exposed to the hippie spirit, I watched the unedited DVD and found a different sort of exposure. McDonough shot no stage shows and few crowd scenes. His film almost exclusively captured naked people walking to and from a skinny dip in the lake. We must assume he was a great admirer of the human form.

A Google search turns up several videos shot by someone who hoped to make a feature movie. The movie never materialized, but YouTube did.

Video clips show a few interviews with stoners and bikers in the Goose Lake crowd. They show drug use. They show shaggy people saying funny words like "bummer" and "rap." They show people going down a big slide and landing on a bouncy thing. They show a grimy toddler flipping peace signs. They show left-wing political activists. They show performances by bands including Ten Years After, Mountain, and Iggy Pop and the Stooges.

One surprise from these preserved slices of 1970 is the fact that few people at Goose Lake smiled as they enjoyed a good time.

Most seemed weary, dirty and somewhat stunned.

It's no wonder the counterculture that spawned the biggest thing ever in Jackson County did not last.